Over the past two years I have been slowly tackling the task of organizing my data. What I found was it wasn't as simple as these files go together in this folder. When you account for servers and backups I found it much more lucrative to come up with an overall organization scheme that allowed me to easily backup data at a moments notice, essentially taking the thought process out of those high-stress-oh-crap-I'm-going-to-loose-all-my-data moments. I certainly don't claim this as original, but I've seen few resources discussing file organization, and if I can be of help to someone else then that makes it worth the effort.
I'll save you the pain of seeing all the diagrams I made while creating the organization scheme I currently use and get straight into the explanation. I believe there are only two types of data, important, and unimportant. How you define these is completely up to you, which makes this organization scheme very customizable. I define important data as, "Anything I could not recreate." This includes college documents, family photos, music I've written, videos I've produced, etc. anything that I have created and could never recreate. Unimportant data is the opposite. It is data that I could recreate. This can also include documents, photos, music, videos, etc. but I usually reserve unimportant data for my movies, music, and games. This is because I can easily purchase or re-rip the data again. It would be a tedious task, but it is doable. How you organize your data after dividing it into important and unimportant is entirely up to you.
Where this become interesting is in the backup process. For example, if my server was dying hard and fast I can easily execute a backup without any thought at all. And as you may have guessed by now that means important data first, and if the server is still functioning unimportant data is second. I've extended this organization scheme into how I choose to structure my RAID pools. Currently, for unimportant data I'm running a 3x6TB RAIDz pool that I backup to an offsite RAID5 server, while important data is in a 5x6TB RAIDz2 configuration with backups to an offsite external HDD enclosure.
I know this might seem obvious, especially to members here, but even in my limited experience repairing PCs for friends and family I have notice a massive gap in understanding how to organize files. In most cases people save their files everywhere. Then when it comes time to do a system restore they're scrambling to find every bit of data they've saved over the past few years. To offer an analog, I can walk into Library A and there will be 3 copies of The Big Book of Widgets (RAID). I can walk into Library B and the same 3 Big Book of Widgets will be there (Backups). But all that seems pointless if I can't find the Big Book of Widgets.
Anyway, I'd love to read your thoughts on what I've offered above and how you organize your data. I geek out on stuff like this so surely there are also people equally as geeky out there.
I'll save you the pain of seeing all the diagrams I made while creating the organization scheme I currently use and get straight into the explanation. I believe there are only two types of data, important, and unimportant. How you define these is completely up to you, which makes this organization scheme very customizable. I define important data as, "Anything I could not recreate." This includes college documents, family photos, music I've written, videos I've produced, etc. anything that I have created and could never recreate. Unimportant data is the opposite. It is data that I could recreate. This can also include documents, photos, music, videos, etc. but I usually reserve unimportant data for my movies, music, and games. This is because I can easily purchase or re-rip the data again. It would be a tedious task, but it is doable. How you organize your data after dividing it into important and unimportant is entirely up to you.
Where this become interesting is in the backup process. For example, if my server was dying hard and fast I can easily execute a backup without any thought at all. And as you may have guessed by now that means important data first, and if the server is still functioning unimportant data is second. I've extended this organization scheme into how I choose to structure my RAID pools. Currently, for unimportant data I'm running a 3x6TB RAIDz pool that I backup to an offsite RAID5 server, while important data is in a 5x6TB RAIDz2 configuration with backups to an offsite external HDD enclosure.
I know this might seem obvious, especially to members here, but even in my limited experience repairing PCs for friends and family I have notice a massive gap in understanding how to organize files. In most cases people save their files everywhere. Then when it comes time to do a system restore they're scrambling to find every bit of data they've saved over the past few years. To offer an analog, I can walk into Library A and there will be 3 copies of The Big Book of Widgets (RAID). I can walk into Library B and the same 3 Big Book of Widgets will be there (Backups). But all that seems pointless if I can't find the Big Book of Widgets.
Anyway, I'd love to read your thoughts on what I've offered above and how you organize your data. I geek out on stuff like this so surely there are also people equally as geeky out there.
